Extrinsic Motivation
So... Thursday? Later today (time is seriously very complicated when you're nocturnal) I'm getting my stitches removed, and I can finally put this whole cysts thing behind me (hopefully) once and for all. Still working on that Norm of the North review, however, I don't want to you know... just only have one review made this month. So, by the end of the month I'm definitely going to review something that's been on the backburner for long enough, Coconut Fred as an atrocity. On the admirable side... I'm looking at a show called Bounty Hamster and it seems to be pretty interesting, and no one has ever heard of it - kind of what admirable animation is built for. ----- So... I think I recently made a huge discovery in the cornerstones of my psyche. I've said recently that I've been suffering from thanatophobia, or a fear of being dead. I've been able to use this fear to some positive. Over the course of the month I've written 20,000 words of a novel because I'm petrified that I might never get to because something bad might happen. This was... intentional by the way. If this was a fear that I couldn't get rid of, I might as well use it positively in any way that I could. And on some level it seemed to work. But... it's motivating an arachnophobe by saying "if you don't do this task, I'm gonna throw a spider on your face." It's not exactly the healthiest thing to do. The fear of death is a strange one, and you can't fight it like other fears. I mean, exposure therapy doesn't exactly work for obvious reasons. Talk therapy doesn't work either because on some level, fearing death is rational. If we didn't fear death, we wouldn't be around as a species. You can't think your way out of it either. For example - "I'll be remembered after my death" gets counter-acted with "even that will fade in time." But I may have been able to... beat it on some level. I'm probably never going to be comfortable with the idea of death. And the problem isn't going to entirely go away. For example, I'm a major hypochondriac - pain in the right side, I immediately think appendicitis - and that comes a lot from a fear of death. The bad thing you fear most tends to be the thing you most expect. But... I think I have something. You don't beat a fear of death by thinking more, but by thinking differently. Why did/do I fear death? I want to be remembered. To be remember for all time is impossible, and so thoroughly knowing that made me go crazy for awhile. You know, death of the universe, etc. It got ridiculous. I was fretful over things several trillion years into the future, which is ridiculous as it sounds. I had to ask better questions. "Why do I want to be remembered" led me down some weird pathways, but the answer largely rested on some kind of human instinct. The best question though was "what do I want to be remembered for?" The answers largely rested on my creative works, the entertainment that I could build. And that helped me realize so much about myself. I've decided that maybe I can't put meaning into my own life and I find what I do purposeless, but... if I could enrich the lives of others in some way, other people who can still finding meaning in it all, it'd be exactly what I'm looking for. This helped me realize that I'm... almost entirely extrinsically motivated, which was a shocking relevation. ----- I've always been a shy loner as a kid. Every friend that I've ever made has approached me, and kept the relationship in tact. I have had a significant problem of... if other people don't make the effort to go out of their way to talk to me, the relationship seems to fade away. And all throughout my life, I'd do creative works, spend time in my own head, and throughout my childhood I was terrified of other people reading my works. So... the answer that came about was largely so unthinkable to me. The answer I got was like "the spaceship wouldn't launch because the ground below it was made out of green jello and not grass." It's kind of ridiculous, but if the ground really was made of jello. I don't know where this metaphor is going. What I've realized is just how extrinsically motivated that I've become, or rather... how extrinsically motivated that I am. It explains most of my successes and all of my failures. Now, the idea of the artist is that "they're doing it because they enjoy it, and they don't care if anyone else enjoys their work or not." And I guess it makes a great distinction that I hadn't been able to before. There are artists, and there are entertainers. And I'm an entertainer (whether I'm good at it or not is up for debate, sure). I do care, immensely whether other people enjoy my work or not. Do I enjoy the feeling of actually writing? Sure, usually. But do you know what gets me to continue with a series? The fact that I can see other people enjoying it on some level. That is what is important to me in creative works. It explains why so many of my projects I've lost interest in. A big clue to this was The Beginner's Guide when some of Davey's thoughts at the end crossed my own. Whether or not I think a project is good... tends to be irrelevant. Actually, that's not it at all. I can do plenty of work that I know is risky in the public perception. The fact that they decided to look at it is what's important. This is a little bit complicated. I'm not saying "I'm going to do what everyone wants me to write or review or whatever and change my product to suit what they want." No... it needs to come from me. On some level, it's a need for approval. So, what I create does have to be a part of me. My ideas, my characters, my stories. But... how much work I've done on a longer project tends to correlate to how much direct feedback that I get. As I've written the novel, I've had some people give me direct feedback and it motivates me so much. They might not even necessarily like what's going on, but it's the core of one of my philosophies - books are meant to be read, not written. It doesn't matter if I fall in love with a character, I want others to. Considering how most people talk about art of any kind, it just... I dunno sounds kind of pathetic. Like, my principles used to be "you've got to do it for yourself." On some level I am. But... when it comes to the Growing Around book, what I want most is for people to read it. I want people to enjoy it, and be entertained. I guess we're used to seeing this line of thinking being used by marketing and executive hacks, trying to write what they think people will want. I'm not going to do that. I still write what I want to see, but it seems that if no one else wants to see it the former desire goes away. I want to bring other people joy, and that brings me joy. And now that I know this, it's allowed me to make my path a little more clear. Category:Miscellaneous